The defense and prosecution both declared victory after Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. was found guilty on 12 counts and acquitted of 27 Friday, but the former Luzerne County Juvenile Court judge, who would have spent less than seven years in prison under a plea agreement that collapsed in 2009, now faces 13 to 15 years.

A jury in U.S. District Court found Mr. Ciavarella guilty of racketeering and conspiracy for accepting $997,600 from wealthy developer Robert K. Mericle. Mr. Mericle testified he won a contract to build a for-profit juvenile detention center after a referral from Mr. Ciavarella.

But the jury rejected extortion, bribery and other charges tied to additional payments to Mr. Ciavarella and his co-conspirator, former Judge Michael T. Conahan, from Mr. Mericle and the center's owner, Robert J. Powell. Prosecutors alleged Mr. Conahan and Mr. Ciavarella schemed to close a county-owned center in order to direct juveniles to Mr. Powell's center.

Mr. Ciavarella, 60, was also found guilty of filing false tax returns and mail fraud for failing to truthfully report the payments from Mr. Mericle and Mr. Powell to the IRS and the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, which requires judges to file annual financial disclosure statements.

He remains free on bail pending sentencing.

"The jury rejected 95 percent of the government's case," defense attorney Al Flora Jr. told reporters on the steps of the federal courthouse following the verdict. "The government really got hurt today on this entire case, and it stands for the proposition of what Mark Ciavarella said all along was true: He never took a kickback; he never took a bribe; and he never extorted Robert Powell."

Before, during and after the trial, Mr. Ciavarella maintained the money he received from Mr. Mericle was a legitimate finder's fee for introducing Mr. Mericle to Mr. Powell. He adamantly denied prosecutors' contention that he tailored his juvenile court decisions to provide a steady flow of juveniles to Mr. Powell's PA Child Care facility in Pittston Twp. and Western PA Child Care in Butler County, which also was built by Mr. Mericle. Mr. Powell's companies were paid more than $30 million by Luzerne County.

The kids-for-cash accusation, which lies at the heart of a series of civil-rights suits filed by hundreds of former defendants against Mr. Ciavarella, attracted national and international media attention to the case.

While Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod alluded to Mr. Ciavarella's treating juveniles as "pawns" during his closing statement Wednesday, prosecutors never introduced evidence to back up claims in a grand jury indictment that Mr. Ciavarella detained juveniles when it was "unwarranted" and pressured juvenile probation officials to recommend detention as part of a money-making scheme.

Mr. Ciavarella, a county judge for 13 years, said after the verdict that he "absolutely never took a dime to send a kid anywhere."

"If that was the case, that would have been in this trial," he said. "You don't think the government would have put me on trial for that if that was the case? Never happened. Never, ever happened."

In a post-verdict news conference, U.S. Attorney Peter J. Smith said Mr. Ciavarella's conduct in juvenile court, while "alarming to many people," was "not directly relevant to what it was necessary for the government to prove" in a case that dealt largely with financial transactions.

"The facts of Judge Ciavarella's conduct as a juvenile court judge are known and we leave that to the appropriate state authorities to address," Mr. Smith said. "To some extent, it's already being addressed and we hope it will be addressed fully."

The state Supreme Court vacated thousands of Mr. Ciavarella's juvenile court rulings in 2009, finding that he repeatedly ignored state court rules requiring him to fully inform defendants of their right to counsel and reveal conflicts of interest, such as the financial benefits he derived from the for-profit detention centers.

Mr. Smith rejected defense claims of victory.

"The defendant, and this should be noted by everyone, has been found guilty of racketeering, one of the most serious offenses in the criminal code, originally intended to be aimed at thugs and street criminals - organized crime.

"It is no small thing, no right thing, for any public official at any level of the government to stand convicted by a jury of the crime of racketeering," Mr. Smith said. "I find it interesting that a man just convicted of racketeering is claiming any sort of victory out there today. I wonder what he would consider a defeat."

As for Mr. Ciavarella's continuing claim that the payments he received from Mr. Mericle were legal, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Houser, who prosecuted the case along with Mr. Zubrod and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Consiglio, pointed out that in convicting Mr. Ciavarella of racketeering, the jury found he committed wire fraud in connection with the $997,600 payment from Mr. Mericle, which he shared with his co-defendant, Mr. Conahan.

The jury was instructed it could not find Mr. Ciavarella committed wire fraud unless the money involved in the transactions was illegally acquired, Mr. Houser said.

Furthermore, the jury, in separate deliberations after the main verdict, found that Mr. Ciavarella was liable to forfeit that amount because the money constituted illegal proceeds.

The six-man, six-woman jury announced it had reached a verdict shortly after 1:30 p.m. Friday. The jurors, chosen from eight counties in Northeast Pennsylvania - excluding Luzerne and Lackawanna, where media coverage of the case has been extensive - had deliberated for 7½ hours Thursday after a seven-day trial.

Mr. Ciavarella, his hands clasped in front of him on the defense table, showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Afterward, he walked back to the spectators' area and huddled briefly with his wife and two daughters, who were accompanied by their husbands.

Prosecutors asked Senior U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik to immediately place Mr. Ciavarella, who has been free on $1 million unsecured bail for nearly 25 months, in federal custody.

"He's at risk for flight," Mr. Houser told the judge. "He faces up to 157 years in prison at this point."

Defense attorney William Ruzzo argued that Mr. Ciavarella's strong family ties would ensure that he would not flee and noted that Mr. Ciavarella had obeyed all of the court's instructions since his arrest.

"This man would rather go on a gurney and be injected rather than leave his family," Mr. Ruzzo said.

While Mr. Ciavarella faces a maximum of 157 years on 12 counts, federal sentencing guidelines indicate he will more likely receive a sentence between 12 years, seven months and 15 years, eight months, Mr. Houser told the court.

Mr. Ciavarella would have been sentenced to seven years and three months under plea agreements he and Mr. Conahan signed in January 2009 that required them to plead guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy. Under federal rules that trim sentences for good behavior, he could have been eligible for release in less than seven years.

Judge Kosik rejected those sentences in July 2009 because he found the judges had failed to accept full responsibility for their crimes. Mr. Ciavarella had made numerous public statements challenging parts of the prosecution's case and Mr. Conahan was uncooperative with federal probation officials to the point of "obstruction of justice," Judge Kosik wrote.

Mr. Flora said Mr. Ciavarella's statements were a reaction to what he felt was a mischaracterization of the admissions he made as part of the plea agreement.

"He was very upset. When he pled guilty, it was to the nondisclosure of a conflict of interest. It was not to a bribe, it was not to a kickback, it was not to extortion. After he entered that guilty plea, when it came out as 'kids for cash,' that's when he became enraged, because that was not something he pled guilty to."

Mr. Conahan pleaded guilty under a new plea agreement. He faces up to 20 years in prison. He did not testify at Mr. Ciavarella's trial.

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